


I am mad, calls the spider, waving its many arms

by tigriswolf



Series: comment_fic drabbles [76]
Category: Marvel (Movies), Norse Mythology, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Dreams, Dreamwalking, Gen, Gore, Not A Fix-It, Quest, Torture, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-10
Updated: 2012-07-10
Packaged: 2017-11-09 13:11:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/455817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tigriswolf/pseuds/tigriswolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everything is blue. The snow falls like tears, and all is silent, and all is blue. </p><p>[Weapons don’t care who holds them.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	I am mad, calls the spider, waving its many arms

**Author's Note:**

> Title: I am mad, calls the spider, waving its many arms  
> Fandom: Avengers movieverse/Norse mythology  
> Disclaimer: not my characters; title from Sylvia Plath  
> Warnings: descriptions of gore; implied violence. Like, seriously. If you know anything about Loki's children in the myths, you'll understand  
> Pairings: none  
> Rating: R  
> Wordcount: 1440  
> Prompt: Any, any, the children here are unearthly.

In Clint's dreams, those long, never-ending days after blue washed him out and swept him away, he's wandering in ice. A wasteland of ice and snow and far-off mountains he can never reach. 

There's never anyone else around, but he hears howling, and he can't track down the source. 

Every dream, he’s wandering. Looking for something. And whenever it snows, the flakes hitting the ground sound like tears.

.

Eventually, in the dreams, one night after an op went bad and he had to kill everyone present instead of just the target, he finds a little girl, sitting pretty on the ice. She’s naked, her legs shriveled like a mummy’s, and her upper half tanned like a kid who lives in the sun. Her hair is divided clear down the middle: left side black as night, right side white as the moon.

Her eyes are blue, blue as the blue that washed him out and swept him away. 

“Hello, Archer,” she says, voice as cold and hollow as the wasteland around them. 

He doesn’t reply because he has no voice. He never does in the dreams. 

But she smiles, this little half-dead girl, and she says, “If you reach the end, you’ll find your prize.”

He wakes up to Nat calling his name, because a mission for the Avengers came in, and they have to go.

.

For a week, he’s alone in the ice, shivering himself awake. 

The seventh night, he finds a hole in the ice and a giant snake sticking his head out, regarding him with black eyes. “Archer,” the snake says, voice deeper than the ocean. 

Clint backs up, but the snake follows, twining his giant head and neck around him, like Jafar did Aladdin, and he really should stop letting Nat pick the movies they watch.

“Archer,” the snake repeats. “Find the end and claim that which is yours, so that we all may be released.” 

The snake lets go, going back down into the ice without even a single splash, and Clint drops to his knees, arms wrapping around himself because the temperature’s plunging down and he wakes up shuddering. 

And he should march straight to the shrinks. Because he’s done the research, thank you, and the blue, the _blue_ \- Loki must’ve left something in him. Something hidden. 

But all he does is roll over, burrowing deeper into his blankets, and lie awake for the rest of the night.  
.

Two months, three, wandering around a barren wasteland of ice, trying to reach the mountains. The howling starts to get louder, and then hoofbeats drum up behind him, and he spins to see an enormous eight-legged stallion staring at him, tossing his head and herding him. 

The horse doesn’t speak until he turns, preparing to leave, and then he says, “Don’t kill anyone you see, Archer,” before galloping off across the ice. 

Clint stares after him, but then the ice cracks beneath his feet and he falls back into his body, waking up with a shout as he rolls off the bed.

.

 _Three down_ , he thinks while he should be paying attention to Sitwell’s briefing of his next mission. _Three to go._

 _Three down,_ he thinks, taking shot after shot. _Three to go._

He’s starting to realize what must be at the end of this fucking quest. He wants to stop looking, he really does. 

_Three down. Three to go._

Weapons don’t care who holds them. 

.

He goes to sleep and blinks awake in a cavern, face to face with a little cherub-faced boy. “Archer!” the boy exclaims, smiling. 

He can’t help smiling back, and then he looks past the boy to a wolf with a blood-soaked muzzle. The boy’s hand is stroking the wolf’s jaw and his belly is torn open, guts spilling out as he backs up. 

Clint doesn’t double over vomiting only because he did the reading and knew this was coming, but it’s a near thing. 

The wolf doesn’t speak. The wolf follows the boy and Clint follows the wolf, and he doesn’t attack any of the shades they pass, each someone he killed for reasons of his own or reasons whoever his master was at the time gave him. Sometimes, for no reasons at all.

The boy stops at a doorway and steps aside. The wolf’s ears flick as he turns his head to look at Clint, and then he steps to the other side, blood still dripping off his muzzle and crystallizing on the floor. The kid doesn’t even seem to notice his wound because he’s still smiling.

“Archer,” the boy says, “don’t be afraid.”

Clint’s not afraid. He hasn’t been afraid since the blue.

When he wakes up back in his room, he goes straight to the range Stark built for him (everyone, of course, but mainly him) and fires arrows until his fingers bleed.

.

Almost a year passes before he makes his way out of the cavern, and Natasha’s been pulling away, and Sitwell’s making noise about standing Clint down, and he’s been forced to see the shrinks, but he’s been dancing his way around shrinks since he was knee-high and his body wreathed in bruises. 

Almost a year of the icy cavern and shades he couldn’t attack and monsters from his past he couldn’t kill (again), and he hasn’t had this many unsanctioned kills since he was an assassin working for himself.

And finally. _Finally_ he finds the right path and the giant wolf chained to the floor, a sword in his mouth, blood and spit spilling down. 

_Five down. One to go_ , he thinks. The wolf’s eyes are panicked, and he’s whimpering, and howling fills the air. 

Clint’s voice comes back as he murmurs, “Shh, big guy. ‘s’alright.” 

He has no idea how to get the sword out. How to break the chains. And he’s done the reading, so he’s pretty sure he knows what’ll happen if he does.

He reaches into the wolf’s mouth, grips the hilt, and says, “Can you open your mouth a little wider?” The wolf does, so he carefully, as gently as possible, works the blade out, and then drops it on the ground.

The wolf closes his mouth and his eyes, sighing. “Yeah, buddy, I hear ya,” Clint mutters, sagging down for a moment. 

But he stands and reaches for the chain, and it falls apart at his touch. “Huh,” he muses, stepping back as the wolf rises, stretching all his limbs and shaking his body, before looking down at Clint. 

“Archer,” the wolf rumbles, voice hoarse and tired. “I thank you.” 

“Don’t mention it,” Clint says, and he wakes up to the wolf’s creaking laughter still echoing in his ears. 

.

Clint doesn’t sleep for a week, back-to-back missions keeping him up, gun or bow in hand, because the crazies are coming out of the woodwork, and he’s either with the Avengers or on his own. 

But the eighth night, he falls asleep at his post, and he’s back in the wasteland, and all of Loki’s children surround him. 

“Archer,” Hel says, and she’s grown now, beautiful and terrible, and holding the sword from Fenrir’s mouth. “Take this and finish your quest.” 

Clint doesn’t look at the rest of them, at Jörmungandr or Sleipnir, at Nari and Vali, at Fenrir. He simply takes the sword from Hel’s hand and starts walking.

Everything is blue. The snow falls like tears, and all is silent, and all is blue. 

Loki does not speak when Clint finds him, bound like Prometheus and guts hanging out. He doesn’t even seem to notice Clint, watching him writhe – but Clint steps closer and realizes Loki’s eyes are gone. 

Loki’s wrists are bleeding and broken, and a chain is threaded through every one of his limbs, and his throat is gaping open. Clint’s not even sure how he’s alive.

Clint brings the sword down on the chain, where it’s tethered to the rock, and Loki screams. Everything is blue and the scream echoes along the horizon and bounces back, and Clint lets the sword fall as the chain dissolves. He catches Loki before he throws himself off the rock, and shudders at the viscera, at the blood, at how Loki doesn’t even seem to notice the pain anymore. 

_Archer_ , Loki whispers in his mind. _Why?_

Clint doesn’t have an answer. But he wakes up to exuberant howls and figures it’ll all be over soon.

.

Thor is recalled to Asgard suddenly and returns with word of Loki’s escape – and the escape of Loki’s allies, monstrous beings and a goddess of the dead. No one in Asgard has any idea how they did it.

Clint doesn’t even think about confessing.

.

Clint’s dreams return to normal, like they were before the blue. Natasha comes back, Sitwell stops glaring, and the shrinks clear him with no trouble.

And then Loki shows up in his room while he’s getting ready for bed, holding a sword Clint recognizes only from his dreams. 

“Archer,” he says, eyes a brilliant green. 

“Yes,” Clint murmurs, dropping to his knees and bowing his head.

This time, he’s not washed out and swept away by the blue. He dives in, submerging himself completely, and his sight’s never been so clear.


End file.
